December 32nd

I needed time away after a hard week at work but my heart fell as I pulled up alongside the parking area. Lots of cars means lots of people and I was decidedly not in the mood for more people. The run up to New Year's Day was hard at work with all sorts of disasters befalling unwary drunken lost souls on vacation. And now here were their more well behaved neighbors fishing walking cycling and photographing.

I pulled out the dog and the camera (the dog actually needed no pulling) and wondered what I could possibly find to photograph after a thousand previous visits. Rusty had no qualms and set off nose down ambling down toward the people fishing on the seawall.

I need not have worried so much as no one much spoke to me, a delightful byproduct of social distancing, and as we strolled down toward the water Rusty and I, a woman came shuffling up toward us. Actually in the distance all I saw was a moving pink splodge through the bushes, that became a woman in some kind of a summer dress that looked completely wrong in that place at that time where shorts and t-shirts rule. She looked rushed and she barely nodded her head as she rustled past me at a steady trot. I think she was not happy at the man who came after her with a worried look on his face. I sort of assumed it was another domestic squabble which at least had not precipitated a frantic call to 911 (no deputies in evidence) but if I was any judge there is nothing to be gained by going on an overnight fishing expedition with a woman in a pink cocktail dress. Poor judgement all round. Not my problem for once.

Rusty seems to be sliding into middle age, and I say that only because he seems to have slowed down a bit. He does run from time to time but he enjoys a slower pace with more investigation as he goes. He jumps as sprightly as ever and is always keen to go for a walk but he is more measured. There again, aren't we all?

There is always something to look at on these outings. Who knows what crazy artist came out to put an owl on a the wall of the old pump house but I don't remember it being there on my last visit.  I lost Rusty at this point as he raced down the hill (he's not always slow and thoughtful) and I plodded down the trail to the low cliff, where without falling I clambered down to sea level. I love having one spot where I can climb up and look down at the horizon. However I had to keep up with my dog.

There was a couple sitting at the bottom of the cliff and I saw them watch Rusty run by unaccompanied. They looked around puzzled, concerned perhaps, and looked back as the self possessed  unaccompanied dog trotted along the trail and started sniffing. Stray or abandoned dogs give themselves away by the way they carry themselves, fearful and ready for disaster. Such was Rusty once, but not anymore. This was another opportunity for someone to declare a disaster, an absconded dog, and start using their wretched portable phones to summon help. But happily we were in a relative wilderness and by the time I hove into view from on high behind the puzzled couple Rusty had decided as he always does, to sit and wait for the slow poke.  they relaxed and he got  up for another solo exploration of the beach.

I have a rather jaundiced view of the notion that if you see something you should say something. Some few things are actual disasters but more often they are just people gone slightly awry. "I think he may be dead!" they say upon seeing someone lying on the sidewalk. Nope, just drunk is the inevitable outcome. However if you do see a dead human being you will know and I will know by the tone of your voice as you come to terms with your own mortality. People react in different ways to the sight fo death; some are totally calm and others lose their lunch but there is always a quality in the voice, a sort of fearful reverence, that I have come to recognize. Next year I retire and I cannot wait.

To be out here and to see nature in action all around me is a glorious change, a rest, a chance to sit and watch and listen and not be responsible for anything, least of all an ambulance siren.  The turkey vultures are back for the winter and they too are looking for dead bodies. Lunch doesn't move so I like t make sure they see movement as they hover overhead. Just in case. 

Tides have been exceptionally low which exposes miles of rock dotted with little pools. Rusty and I sat for a while after our walk. He has taken to spending part of each long walk sitting and watching the world by. That worked for me sitting in the grass at the each of the parking lot overlooking the coastline below us.

It was a great start to the day and I was not ready to go home.

On Friday morning when we showed up for work at quarter to six Keith looked over at me from his locker and said gloomily:"You know today is really just December 32nd?" It turned out that way, twelve hours of more of the same. But a couple of hours watching the clouds and the light and the reflections on the water cured some of that. A few hours of extra sleep completed the cure. This guy's tool is way bigger than mine but I'm not jealous.

This guy used his iPhone to record his moment but he smiled cheerfully and said good morning as he pedaled by. No conversation in the time of virus.

No jealousy regarding men riding motorcycles. I'm a van traveler now. I was driving home from a walk Wednesday night when a motorcycle came roaring round a tight corner, a few exist in the back country, and he took the line perfectly, no wobbling, a nice angle of lean, prefect control of speed. A few seconds later another motorcycle flashed into view. This one missed the turn completely and roared straight past the hood of my car, missing my vehicle by about three seconds and disappeared into the mangroves with an almighty cartwheel, a splash and a flying body. Oh well I thought, here we go again. At least it's not me. I waited a second and turned on my four way flashers. The two riders took off their helmets (good children!), neither appeared to have impaled themselves as I feared and neither was bleeding. She looked about ready to burst into tears and he looked severely embarrassed. "That was spectacular" I laughed, probably not helping. A pick up truck stopped and a big husky man who might have been a relative got out looking serious. He neither looked at me nor spoke. I drove on. No 911 needed please note.

Sitting there watching the world go by a car stoped and the driver, properly masked got out and excused himself very politely. He sounded European, German perhaps but spoke perfect English asking for directions to Bahia Honda State park. I told him the truth because he was very nice and he backed off to his car. That as when I noticed Rusty had got up and sat down right next to me between me and the stranger. I was impressed. I let him know. 

We went home.

The Meadows

A relaxing walk with my little Panasonic compact LX100. 

New Year's Day in the neighborhood called the Meadows.  

They call it the Meadows because that is what it used to be before development.

It is notable now for pretty and varied architecture, lots of greenery and no shops.

Shadows and light on a  sunny afternoon.

Always worth a walk. 

George Smathers Sunlight

 Happy New Year and may we hope for better things to come. Like sun sea and sand, today's theme.

The idea was to use part of a lunch break taking photos at the beach to take advantage of cool temperatures and bright sunlight. I wanted to see what mood I could engender in black and white. Well, that didn't last long.

The colors are just too vibrant to be ignored.

People who live in the Keys tend to forget how these islands are sold to the winter bound masses Up North. The easiest way to sell a frigid commuter kicking a snowdrift on the idea of a Florida vacation is to promise sun sea and sand. Which is what we have here and you can see why some people prefer it to snow drifts. Other people like their water frozen but we can ignore them for now. 

The thing is: this is the single longest stretch of beach in the Lower Keys rivalled by Sombrero Beach, shorter but deeper and better for swimming in Marathon, and the pay to enter beach at Fort Zachary Taylor, actually the best swimming beach in Key West, even if it is in the state park which requires you pay to enter, not a to but enough to keep the bums out which could be a plus.

Smathers Beach is built of sand imported from the Bahamas and dumped here to be dribbled away over time by the tides and in bigger gulps by occasional hurricanes. Every morning a tractor pulls a giant rake up and down the beach clearing any possible trash while smoothing out the fine grained sand for the pleasure of those frozen northerners finally enjoying their all too brief vacations in Paradise.  

The beach is named for another weird character with only a peripheral connection to Key West. The other odd name involves Mallory Square home of the famous sunset which is named for Stephen Mallory whose greatest claim to fame is as the Confederate secretary of the Navy. The beach is named for US Senator George Smathers (1913-2007) who was a close friend of President Kennedy and had nothing to do with Key West directly. When you read his biography he reminds of the kinds of people who got elected to public office once upon a time, true public servants. He served in the military, rose through the political ranks, retired and then made hefty donations to his home state. He was a popular Florida politician in the old Southern Democrat mode of fond memory, and I suppose that's what got him immortality on this stretch of sand.  Senators didn't cut each others' cross party throats in those happy days.

I don't suppose visitors to the beach much care one way or another who it is named for, such is the fleeting nature of fame. I like to think about Kennedy and Smathers getting elected to the Senate together and then and learning the ropes of their political trade together. And rumor has it they shared the more social ropes of their trade as well, two handsome young well connected men. Ahem.

Back to the present: I cannot fathom getting into seawater at this time of year. Seventy five degrees? I think not especially with a cold north wind blowing. On the other hand I'm not here on vacation and summer swimming suits me best.

It does make for a pleasant lunch break to come out and sit and stare for a little while, even in long pants and closed toed shoes to watch the light play on the waters, to see boats actually deploying their sails, to feel a frisson of cool air on your cheek. Before you go back to the office.

To do nothing in particular except to watch the clouds and the bicycles and the active people being active. To remember Senator George Smathers while at the beach. A pleasant afternoon's distraction.

Showering With Truckers

We set ourselves some goals for our most recent week long road trip and one was to buy a shower in a  truck stop. We did our due diligence and watched YouTube videos and read up online about the experience and decided we two fresh not so young middle class recreational drivers could muscle in on the public showers offered at truck stops, so we did.  Like any new experience you feel rather stupid for not knowing the ropes but the clerk was kindness itself as she took our public shower virginity.

It seems all truck stop showers work the same way, more or less. Designed for road travelers and not reserved exclusively for commercial drivers you are welcome to park your car and walk in with some money and get in line. I wish I had known this decades ago as driving while feeling scruffy really diminishes the pleasure. We decided to go in the middle of the day, at 11:30 am as you can see below, to avoid waiting. My wife had read that you can shower together so we paid $14 for both of us which made the shower seem almost free. She has yet to start investigating the truck stop apps that accumulate points and loyalty rewards and so forth...you can imagine!

The cubicle has a toilet (porta potty users please note if you want private dumping) and per the reviews on Google maps, the facility was spotless. We carry extra wash bags in the van (an idea from YouTube my wife says) so if we stay in a friend's place or a hotel we can carry our wash stuff with us easily without disturbing our wash things in daily use, stored in the van's shower compartment.

Expect the shower cost to include towels and soap and shampoo so even if you are on a  car trip and not organized you can walk in and take a shower with no fuss. It is pretty amazing and well worth $10-$25 for a single driver especially if you saved time and money by snoozing in your car. No time limits here and very hot water. Obviously details and prices will vary but you get the idea.

I grew up in English boarding schools so communal showering was part of my childhood. And I know modern Americans tend to be  so germ-phobic the idea of this kind of showering is a freak show so I'm not here to change anyone's mind. For us we decided having the heat humidity and plumbing for rent away from the van on a  cold autumnal day is ideal. Lots of people think they want to shower in their vans and some road warriors do just that. We decided to reserve the ability to do that with a separate shower stall but with no plumbing we have to use our solar shower in the space which has a porta potty and a floor drain but no built in shower, no water heater and thus no plumbing to break. On pleasant days off the beaten track we hang a sheet across the open back doors and create our own shower stall with the same solar shower warmed with a couple of kettles of hot water. We learned the value of simple showers while traveling by sailboat. In the tropics lay the solar shower in the sun and it will quickly get scalding hot.

The pursuit of simplicity is why I wanted a porta potty. When you have a plumbed toilet you have to dump it at a proper dumps site in a campground or park and naturally pay for the privilege. I spotted a roadside sign to this free dump site courtesy of the State of Wisconsin last summer and it was the work of a moment to dump our five gallon tank. However the porta potty is versatile in that it can be dumped anywhere and I carry the tank in a  discreet shopping bag into vault toilets at trailheads or rest areas or wherever necessary. The downside is you have to be able to handle the job and for some reason it has never bothered me so pouring out and cleaning up is no problem. We use a separate trash can for toilet paper (a hold over from our boating days to avoid clogs) and I make absolutely double certain the toilet is as clean as I found it, if not cleaner after I dump. I am not a fan of foul toilets as much as I don't mind pouring out my own. And if the government says don't drink the water better you don't defy this particular government imposition!

My goal traveling by van is to have a minimal footprint ecologically and socially and I'd rather not make myself obvious by being an asshole to put it simply.  Walmart used to allow overnight parking until the imbeciles took advantage and instead of parking they camped and dumped trash and so forth and now free overnight parking at Walmart is becoming a rarity. I'm not excited by the idea of free parking in a  parking lot at a business so its no skin off my nose but my wife and I are not necessarily drawn to parking in company anyway. We arrive late, park, sleep and leave before anyone notices us or more to the point gets annoyed by us. It's easy to stop later and carry out the life functions in a place designed for them, a gas station or a park to give Rusty his morning walk after the world has come awake and stepping out of a vehicle is a normal activity.

I understand these considerations are a little weird in a  world regulated for the benefit of commerce and commuting and daily habits formed over the decades by people used to living in a  fixed abode. I mention them here for those curious but also as a warning for people who think living a mobile life is a trend worth jumping on. Layne and I are old and we have been travelers together and independently all our lives. If you meet her ask how she and a friend spent a night on a Norwegian freighter docked in Barcelona when she was young and impressionable and wandering Europe on her youthful own. Call her naïve or fearless but she has no concerns about boondocking or parking alone on the streets. However my word of caution is to burn no bridges if the idea of Instagram van life has a certain appeal. We allowed ourselves two years to get used to it and discover if we really wanted to go back to boat living instead. To have moved out of a house into a  van just like that would have imposed intolerable stress on us. Even now we look back at our first extended trip to Michigan and see many ways we could have done that better. Next time...we say to ourselves with our eyes on a Maine trip next (vaccinated?!) summer.

We left the shower feeling suitably refreshed, and I took a quick picture of the car collection that was inevitably mentioned in reviews of the shower stop. Truck stop showers, solar shower inside or outside the van, and body wipes in between. Good enough for you? Probably not and no blame there. Well, now you know and be glad when you flush the toilet it all just goes away to the great big porta potty in the sky. Happy New Year!

The reward is the open road.

Mask Curfew

Curfew: what a  pain it is. One could argue it's a necessary pain, or as some have tried to say it is an unnecessary pain. With a quick antagonistic lawsuit under their belts city leaders got the backing of a federal judge for the plan to shut the city down this weekend at ten pm. The claim was that a curfew between ten in the evening and six in the morning was unconstitutional, which the judge said it wasn't. 

Three thousand Americans are dying every day and hospitals are filling up and the vaccine is being rolled out at a snail's pace and here we are. Key West is vacationland and has been for a hundred years and the small matter of a highly politicized virus isn't going to change the desires and habits of people tired of discipline and isolation. Canadians can't show up as the border remains closed, cruise ships are not running yet so airplanes and cars are the ticket to tropical fun in the sun. Enough people have showed up that hotels have 75 percent occupancy.  One has to wonder what the percentage of social distancing mask wearing hand washing dreariness that is being maintained. Not much I dare say, as one doesn’t want to spoil one’s vacation. 

It's funny because in every war more people die of non combat related causes, starvation creates weakened immune systems, which in turn leave populations susceptible to disease. But we remember the frontline faces torn apart by the weapons of war. Even now the suffering of medical staff are not really front and center of the public consciousness in the endless mask debates. I look back at my time in the hospital and wonder how ghastly it would be to go through all that with Covid on top of all the other issues I dealt with in my hospital bed.

Against all that the city of Key West wants to shut down every night this weekend at ten o'clock and the reaction has been predictably mixed, which leads me to wonder what the point is. Perhaps it's time to let those of us who want to keep trying to avoid infection to do so and those who want to take a chance on being the rare human that doesn't mind the warnings, to do what they want. 

It seems so bleak to even think about just giving up yet after nine months of distancing I am not of a mind to give up, even if my turn at the vaccine is six or more months away. This misery has been going on long enough for most people to understand what's at stake. Hospitals are full and still people aren't jumping on the mask bandwagon. What more can we say?

Early on in the pandemic when the Keys were locked down I recall someone saying the stillness was like the period of waiting for a hurricane to land, in this case a hurricane that seemed never ready to actually arrive. Walking around late at night with only Rusty for company there are similar feelings swirling through my head. 

So much effort, so much energy to ask people to do what seems obvious seems like energy wasted to me. If, like a naughty child you keep reaching to remove the mask when the authority figure's back is turned, I am of the mind to say go ahead and live with the consequences, but I am not a parent, nor a community leader, nor an overwhelmed ICU nurse, so  I wash my hands, wear my mask and keep on keeping on. 

One more time I'm glad I'm not a cop on patrol asking people to be sensible, and being yelled at for my trouble. But that's where they will be while I am at home girding my loins for another round of taking calls and staying well clear of the crowds of people afraid  of the silence of being alone.  

Old Town Light

Winter sunlight in Key West has a quality that is decidedly different to summer light. It shouldn't be surprising because the sun clearly moves lower in the sky changing the angle, even though around here at 24 degrees North the change in the amount of sunlight is minimal. Compared to the top and bottom of the planet where sunlight actually comes and goes around here sunset varies by an hour or so. The shift to daylight saving time moves sunsets back by a lot in comparison and in summer it can still be light at 8:30 in the evening.

Last week we passed the shortest day while I was off the grid on vacation but I noticed the solstice and I was glad of it as I prefer longer evenings. I get off work at six and I don't arrive home on Cudjoe Key till half an hour later and this time of year it's already dusk as I leave the police station. One reason living and working in Key West is so pleasant is the absence of harsh weather in winter, no ice scrapers heavy jackets or tire chains needed so winter is just a milder form of summer. Short days are the strongest reminder of the season. That and not sweating all the time which gets to be pleasant as summer drags on.

I like the crisp winter light when I can get out in it on my days off or my lunch breaks and now I'm looking forward to longer days as the seasons change. One other thing about winter in Key West is things stay colorful and here is a painted car to prove the point:

When I go away from the Keys I am reminded how fortunate I am to live in a town with a large and vibrant Old Town, and it is a lived in space, not perfect and  yet not crumbling either. There are always things to see, be they as simple as a wooden fence in afternoon sunlight...

...or overhead foliage that I have, over the decades, learned to look up and notice as I walk.

I didn't see homes like this on every street corner on mainland Florida.

Or alleys like Curry Lane. We may be headed back to summer and hurricane season and all that, my last living and working in Key West but I plan to keep documenting the light as we go.